Bury yourself in work.

You feel like you now understand a little better what Mia was going through. You don’t want to be alone with your thoughts right now. Your head is quickly filled with “What Ifs” when you are. You leave school and go back home immediately after classes end. You want to distract yourself, but you’ll try to be productive while you’re at it.

Normally, you’d be working out with Emily and Megan on a Wednesday, but you’re sure that’s not happening today. Still, what better way to distract yourself that work yourself to the bone while listening to the podcast you’ve been following.

You’re in your place, in the middle of your abs crunches, headphones on, listening to a guy talk about what you should consider when thinking of your future.

“Ask yourself, ‘what are my best skills and how can I make money off of them?’ After all, they always say that if you’re good at something to never do it for free, right?

Yet don’t you dare forget one simple thing. Whatever you do, you better make sure it’s something you find pleasant. The fastest way to stress and poor mental health is working on something you hate.”

What are your best skills? Well, not counting the “social skills” granted to you by the Affection Multiplier. Your first thought goes to your physical condition, only because that’s what you’re doing right now.

“…27, 28, 29, 30!” You count, finishing your third set of 30 crunches. You lie down resting for 15 second and keep thinking.

You’ve only just started with your new workout hobby, so it’s definitely not one of your best skills. Sure, you’ve improved your physical condition by a metric fuckton, but you know that your best skills are in the academic department.

After the fifth crunches set, you climb on the beam on the ceiling and start your pull ups.

But even if that’s where your skills are, it’s mostly just writing and studying. You’re good at that. Essays come relatively easily, and you’re able to memorize a lot of things for tests.

Memorizing…

You were also part of the debate team back in high school. You would’ve joined here at Hayes, too, if it wasn’t for all the issues it would’ve caused. Mia has praised your knack for it, and you’ve helped Katherine with her arguments before.

You drop from the beam when your pull ups are done.

“Should I get into law school?”

Honestly, becoming a lawyer doesn’t sound too bad. You could get an undergraduate degree in political science before getting into law school. What path do you go from there? Public? Government? Private? Criminal law?

Dammit. Now you can see yourself in court while a certain catchy theme plays in the background.

You sigh. Yeah. Defense attorney might be cool, but you don’t want to throw the prosecutor option away yet.

After your exercises, you spend the rest of your day doing research on different colleges, universities and the like. Reading on which offer the most convenient and complete courses. Also… you find yourself subconsciously favoring schools that are close to this town.

…

You did the right thing, right? It was good to tell them, wasn’t it? They deserved to know. You’d been imagining how it would be to spend the rest of your life with them. In your mind, you know that what you did was fair, yet your heart aches, fearing the worst.

This is the first night you curse your Seldom Sleepy trait, if only because it leaves you even more time to think about this stuff.

You can’t bring yourself to go to School on Thursday. You’re afraid of seeing the girls, even Mia, whom you haven’t told about the AMA. Therefore, for the first time in your life, you skip school voluntarily. Funny, not even the terrible experiences on the first month here at Hayes were enough to make you skip on your responsibilities, but the fear of seeing the girls you love and having to ignore them… or worse, having them ignore you, is too much.

You spend the whole day in your computer, and it’s 8:00 PM when you hear a knock on the door.

…

Shit.